This invention relates to a local file transfer system and method, and in particular to a system and method for transferring digital data over a high-speed, short-range communications link with the assistance of a slow speed, wide area network communications link.
It is anticipated that hand-held portable and mobile devices (such as mobile phones, laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs)) will have multiple communications interfaces, including a short-range, high-speed wireless network interface and a slower-speed, wide area network interface. Thus, such a device may have a short-range, high-speed Bluetooth interface, and a slower-speed cellular telephone interface. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology which operates at 2.45 GHz. Such a short-range wireless network (known as a short-range wireless network) can support up to eight simultaneous devices. The membership of such a piconet can dynamically change as users enter and leave.
Another known short-range wireless technology is the wireless networking protocol IEEE802.11.
With either of these two short-range wireless technologies, each member of a short-range wireless network usually communicates outside the network at no more than the data transmission rate of a single wide area connection such as a cellular telephony connection. Typically, each device in such a short-range wireless network is capable of storing a limited amount of digital data.